another kick at the climate change cat ... 34

[rb1957]

i think the problems with burning fossil fuels are that we're returning carbon to the atmosphere at an unnatural rate, and that there was a very long interval between when the carbon was deposited from the atmosphere and when it's getting returned to it.

the second problem is meant to say that bio-fuels, which take from and return to the atmosphere over a short timescale, probably won't have the same effect on the global climate as compared to fossil fuels. Though, of course, once we start doing this on a global scale and derive meaningfull amounts of energy this way then there'll be unforeseen side effects.

i think it's reasonable to say that the global climate is changing; and that this would be happening even without mankind's contributions.

i think it's reasonable to say that atmospheric CO2 levels change with climate. i think the record shows that previously (say before the 20th century) that CO2 increased sometime after the global temperature increased.

i think it's reasonable to say that the amount of carbon we putting into the atmosphere has the potential to affect global climate. this is i think too wishy-washy "for the masses" so we're being told carbon is changing the climate ... maybe a simple message but one that has divided those wanting more explanation.

once you say that then i think it's reasonable to ask is this a bad thing, ie do we want to change ? We have to acknowledge that energy is the means to developing our economies. adding hydro, geo-thermal, wind and solar power aren't bad things ... there's a cost and a benefit associated. clearly there are some places that can really benefit for these (because of sustained sunlight or wind or water resources or etc). becoming more efficient in our energy consumption is clearly a good thing, though i suspect that won't gain us significant relief. i worry that developing economies are progressing along the same energy path that the developed countries have used, and that maybe there are "better" choices today.

we can't (won't) stop burning fossil fuels, we need the cheap energy. we can be a little smarter and make power stations more efficient but essentially we're dependent on fossil fuels. we're reluctant to persue the nuclear option, though i wish more research money was being directed at fusion power which i see as the only truly long term option.

it is IMHO nonsense to talk about reducing CO2 production to 1990 (or 2000 or whatever) levels principally because developing economies (China in particular, and probably India as well) are going to be burning more and more fossil fuels. carbon sequestration is also IMHO a nonsense technology unless you're talking about growing trees (and biomass). it is also IMHO nonsense to talk about sustainability ... truly sustainable energy would mean using energy resources at the same rate as they're being created (ie no fossil fuels or nukes) or available (solar, wind, hydro, geo-thermal). but then maybe that's one answer to the question, and we'll make truly huge investments in these "green" energies so that we'll increase the fraction of energy we derive from these sources, maybe enough to significantly reduce the carbon output.

if we're going to pay taxes on carbon (through whichever scheme you choose) ... where's the money going ? what's it doing to fix the "problem" ?

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[TGS4]

rconnor,

As always, you have provided an wealth of information and references to the peer-reviewed literature (or pal-reviewed, but that's another discussion).

I would like to re-enter this discussion by talking about energy. I really wish that I could believe you that (what I was talking about w.r.t. shifting the goalposts) scientists have started talking about OHC and total energy only because the science has started to advance. I think that both of us can agree that, in this context, the "science" is certainly not settled.

Anyway... Ii think that we agree that energy, in the form of fluxes and storage, are really THE issue here. Good. Let's address them, shall we. Most of the information, metrics, etc that you have shared are all based on something either called or akin to a global average temperature. That's an interesting mathematical construct, but as engineers I think that we can agree that it is meaningless. The key is energy, or enthalpy, if you will. An average temperature can be useful in this context only if the specific heat capacity of air is constant for that range of temperatures creating said average. So, let's examine that assumption:
[ul]
[li]For dry air, cp varies from 1.005 to 1.009 [kJ/kg*K] (

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-properties-d_156.html

for temperatures in the range of -50°C to 60°C). That's a pretty small variation - so far so good.[/li]
[li]For non-dry air (i.e. real world conditions), the specific heat capacity will range from 1.005 (cold, where total moisture content is virtually zero) to 1.095 [kJ/kg*K] (40°C @ 100% RH -

http://www.coolit.co.za/airstate/airmoistobject.htm).

Of course, moist air has a higher mass, so the difference in volumetric heat capacity are even larger.[/li]
[/ul]

That is at least a 9% difference in energy capacity. Considering that we are talking about a purported heat flux variation (for an anthropogenic fingerprint w.r.t. CO2) of less than 1% of the total flux, such an error in assumption for the non-changing nature of specific heat capacity of moist/dry air is unacceptable.

So, from my perspective, any correlation/computation/metric that uses some averaged temperature over time is pretty much useless. So, unfortunately, I think that we can reject, out of hand, almost all of those lovely references that you provided. They are somewhat interesting, but because they lack any sort of engineering rigour, in my opinion they fail.

Next, let's talk OHC (ocean heat content). Again, we have a measure of temperature of the water, but the issue should really be energy. Water's specific heat capacity varies from 4.210 to 4.179 [kJ/kg*K] (

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-thermal-properties-d_162.html

- granted, that's water, not sea water, but for the sake of argument, let's go with that). That's a variation of 0.74%. That's certainly better than for air. And, let's also run with the assumption that, when the OHC content numbers are calculated, that the temperature-specific specific heat capacity is used for each measurement. Our only reliable OHC measurements have come from the ARGO floats system. They have been providing us with very good data. The ARGO floats were started to be deployed in 2000 and achieved a float-count of 3000 (the desired number for reasonable coverage) in 2007. They currently have 3589 floats (

http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/About_Argo.html).

So, from an engineering perspective, I think that we can have confidence in the global nature of the OHC data from 2007 onwards. That's a whopping 6 years of data - not even half of a solar cycle. It's great that we have this data, and I look forward to figuring out what we can make of this data in 50-60 years.

With respect to models, I would also like to share a post from Dr. Robert G. Brown at Duke University Department of Physics.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/...dels-is-completely-meaningless-statistically/

For all you haters, suck up your dislike for the site and read the post. Then, tell me how you like your models.

W.r.t. "the pause", it's actually less about the pause in global warming of average air temperatures (which I just demonstrated to be more than a bit sketchy), it's the divergence between the models (see the Dr. Brown post above, though, for some additional context) and actual measured temperatures.

When the models are "tuned" to have high sensitivity to CO2, with a myriad of positive feedbacks, they have overshot the actual air temperature over the last 15+ years. So, either (a) the equilibrium sensitivity to CO2 is wrong, (b) the feedbacks are incorrect, (c) there are other processes not simulated/understood that are overwhelming, or (d) all of the above. None of those answers bode well for the catastrophic anthropogenic-CO2-generated thermageddon hypothesis.

 

[zdas04]

Those are very good points, and the article is excellent. When speaking of averaging model results, the author makes a great point:

So why buy into this nonsense by doing linear fits to a function — global temperature — that has never in its entire history been linear, although of course it has always been approximately smooth so one can always do a Taylor series expansion in some sufficiently small interval and get a linear term that — by the nature of Taylor series fits to nonlinear functions — is guaranteed to fail if extrapolated as higher order nonlinear terms kick in and ultimately dominate? Why even pay lip service to the notion that R^2 or p for a linear fit, or for a Kolmogorov-Smirnov comparison of the real temperature record and the extrapolated model prediction, has some meaning? It has none.

Let me repeat this. It has no meaning! It is indefensible within the theory and practice of statistical analysis. You might as well use a ouija board as the basis of claims about the future climate history as the ensemble average of different computational physical models that do not differ by truly random variations and are subject to all sorts of omitted variable, selected variable, implementation, and initialization bias. The board might give you the right answer, might not, but good luck justifying the answer it gives on some sort of rational basis.

This statement applies to every single graph in rconnor's post above. They are all an abuse of statistics, physics, and even simple logic.

He even made my point about physics

We cannot solve the many body atomic state problem in quantum theory exactly any more than we can solve the many body problem exactly in classical theory or the set of open, nonlinear, coupled, damped, driven chaotic Navier-Stokes equations in a non-inertial reference frame that represent the climate system.

but he made it far better.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[rb1957]

ocean thermal energy measured by surface temperature ? i accept it's the best we can do, but i'm willing to bet that it (surface temperature) won't tell us much about the temperature at depth, and so not much about the ocean's thermal energy. typical science ... the more you know the more questions you have !

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[TGS4]

rb1957 - ARGO measures ocean temperatures (and salinity) down to a depth of 2000m. The data is pretty good - there's just so little of it temporally.

 

[rb1957]

damn, knew i should've looked into that !!

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[2dye4]

From Robert G. Brown

""Note the implicit swindle in this graph — by forming a mean and standard deviation over model projections and then using the mean as a “most likely” projection and the variance as representative of the range of the error, one is treating the differences between the models as if they are uncorrelated random variates causing >deviation around a true mean!.""

He first notes that the model end results look like " it looks like the frayed end of a rope "
Then he chastises the use of these end results which are frayed as he says to choose a mean result likely error based on
the supposed correlation between the results. Seems contradictory to me right at the start.

So this 'correlation' is not evident in the graphs so where is the source of the correlation. Of course there is some
but it would have to be significant to invalidate expecting the mean result of the models. They do this predicting
the most likely landfall of a hurricane and in Monte Carlo simulation.

One frequent method of the skeptics is to dump reams of graphs and isolated data sources along with comments that really only raise doubt
when nothing has been provided to raise the doubt. Random cherry picked charts and trends do not make data. And no I do not believe
climate scientists are doing this.

Regarding the placement of temperature sensors along the coastlines. Which location is more likely to capture a temperature closer to the real average
temperature of a zone of air. Up in the wind blowing from the Ocean or down in a valley out of the prevailing wind and sheltered from sun.

My position statement in short.
I do not believe the scientists are all involved in a conspiracy, nor are they stupid.
The data fusion methods are too involved for most people who do not specialize in this area.
We have observed an unusual warming in the last 2000 years that just so happens to occur at the same time unusual CO2 emissions were released.
The theory of greenhouse gasses is established and over 100 years old which is long before anyone though seriously about MMGW.
Gov probably is salivating at an opportunity to tax for its own benefit.
The lack of reliable peer reviewed research taking on MMGW from the skeptical side is revealing given the money surely available to anyone who could seriously cast doubt on MMGW.
Nothing will be done because people will listen to what they want to hear and someone will always tell them there is no MMGW.

 

[rb1957]

i think a monte carlo simulation is quite different to averaging different climate models.

monte carlo varies inputs in a known, orderly manner, trying to determine a range of possible outcomes, allowing you some confidence/probability that the outcome will be in a particular range.

reading his story about modelling electrons, i think he's saying the models aren't comparable ... they attempt to be "better" than previous models by adding in more interactions, influences, etc. i think if the models were derived in isolation then you might have something you could average ... each being a reasonably equal depiction of the real world

as for skeptics "cherry picking" ... well, everyone does, there is too much material to refer to all of it. everyone picks data that supports their proposition.

why do you think there's no peer review of skeptic reports ? i'd've thought that all reports published have peer review. mind you i don't think that that is a guarrantee of quality.

and "nothing will be done" ... well, i think too much has been done already ! I fear more will be done in the future with little positive impact on what they're trying to "fix".



Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[cranky108]

Consiter that when it cold, we make heat. But when it's hot we don't always make cold.

Not that it means anything.

 

[KENAT]

However, when it's hot, and we locally make cold, we actually add to global heat by most techniques.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[TGS4]

KENAT - the amount of "heat" that we add to the global system directly (by converting all man-made energy - fossil fuels included - completely to heat) is less than 0.01% of the amount of energy that we get from the sun.

We used, in 2008 (ref) 144e15 W*hr. Or, in convenient engineering unit: 5.184E20 J. Based on an average solar irradiance of 341.5 W/m², and a global surface area of 510,072,000 km², the annual solar energy input to the planet's system is ~5.5e24 J. So, man's energy generation contribution is 9.43e-3% of the total solar input.

Perhaps this small little calculation can show why some people have a difficult time believing that we can have a huge impact on the global climate...

 

[rconnor]

debodine, thank you for the head nod. I also greatly appreciate your humility on your expertise and you opening articles you find interesting to criticism. This kind of attitude is great to see, I really applaud you for it. If you are interested in learning about temperature data from both sides, I've already listed a few places to begin researching the viewpoint of supporters of the climate change theory. WUWT seems to be the most popular place to go for the other side (I'll avoid making any more comments...note: I read WUWT on a weekly basis). Also, see the story about Richard Muller below under the "Temperature Data Sets" section.

TGS4,

Temperatures Trends are "Useless"
I'm confused as to your argument that short term fluctuations in temperature and humidity can vary the cp of air, therefore global average temperatures over decades are "useless". Some times/places are a bit hotter, some are a bit colder. Some times/places are a bit less humid, some are a bit more humid. But the data that shows that, across all of those locations, the average temperature trends warmer helps minimize that worry. It's a weird argument.

Same with OHC. I've presented the data, it shows warming. Warming = more kJ. Increased heat content = more kJ. So, what's your point?
Graphs from NOAA
[image

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png

]
[image

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png

]
[image

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content700m2000myr.png

]

So you say the concern is about energy - like the increased heat content in those images? I'd agree, it's a bit of a concern!

You feel it's more appropriate to talk about fluxes? Fine. Wait, that sounds familiar...oh right, I can't say anything about fluxes because the data is too imprecise! So, if I pander to your assertions, I can't argue from either side! But if you want to talk fluxes, see my post where I had to tell GregLocock what an axiom is:

If the radiative energy imbalance was presumed to be true (i.e. an axiom), NASA would not have sent a satellite into orbit FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF MEASURING THE ENERGY BUDGET.

Nor would the following papers need to written if they were studying axioms:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2165...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JD0...

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/201104...

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/e...

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBa...

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/wxwise/homerbe.html

And just a few more from the ERBE team...and by a few I mean 416 publications

There's a new paper that just got released on the subject. It also discusses water vapor, which you brought up before. Worth a read (Sherwood et al, 2014 or a watch).

The "Pause" is About Models, Not Temperatures
Did you read what I said about ENSO?

rb1957, yes - ENSO is very central to the state of climate on a year to year basis. I suggest reading on ENSO in more detail. You’re welcome to go back and look at my compressed air system analogy (at 23 Dec 18:23) if that helps. Another very good run down by Tamino can be found here. I strongly recommend reading it as, like you said, ENSO is an important aspect. You may also review NOAA’s FAQ on the topic.

Again, ENSO is about the storage (during La Nina’s) and release (during El Nino’s) of heat in the oceans. This is caused by changes in atmospheric pressure and trade winds which brings warmer water that normally pools deeper in the ocean near Indonesia to the surface and across to the west coast of South America (during El Nino).

As far as the research shows, it has no significant effect on climate in long term as it is (1) temporary, with ENSO events lasting ~1 year to 18 months, (2) stochastic, with the norm being (roughly) oscillating between El Nino and La Nina events, and (3) does not impose any long term change in forcing (cloud coverage and precipitation change during these events but no research I’ve seen demonstrates a significant, lasting effect).

To your two quotes that you took exception to, replace ENSO with volcanoes and you’ll see why your argument is rather thin. Can you predict, in the long term, when we will have major volcanic eruptions? No, neither can any expert on the planet. However, aerosols will go into the air, cool the planet for a few years, dissipate and then the climate goes back to normal trends (unless it is a super massive eruption that flips the stability of the climate).

The same applies for ENSO. We have an El Nino – the planet experiences a slightly warmer year. We have a La Nina – the planet experiences a slightly cooler year. Neither La Nina or El Nino events have any notable effect on climate after the event. No trends have been changed in either case. A great illustration of this lack of effect on long term temperature trends by ENSO is when you compare all El Nino years with each other, all La Nina years with each other and all ENSO neutral years with each other. Here is what you get...

Why is it important to get 100% right something that has a large effect on year-to-year temperatures but no possible mechanism for effecting long term trends? If you're worried about short, term cherry picked trends, it matters a lot. If you're worried about long term trends, it has very little impact (as my analysis demonstrates clearly - but which you've danced around by dismissing temperature data "out-of-hand"). Again, if you can show me reviewed research that says a physical mechanism inherent with ENSO has long term effects on climate, I'd be all ears. It would go a long way to support your point.

Temperature Data Sets - One Skeptics Search from the Truth!
While on the support of temperature data sets, let me tell you a story about one of the most vocal voices against temperature data sets - Dr. Richard Muller. Muller was very critical of the whole anthropogenic climate change theory. In particular, he was critical of the temperature data sets and was likely a supporter of (or even quoted in) many of the blog posts that convinced you that they were all rubbish. So what did Muller do? Well, he developed his own data set at Berkley to eliminate all the forms of bias or "corruption" in the data.

And what did his own data do to his opinion? Completely inverted it. From Muller himself, is a piece in the New York Times on his conversion. From the article,

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Some more great snippets from the article,
"These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming"
A skeptic validating the results of the evil IPCC, blasphemy!

"...it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases."
That's not very "skeptical" of him to say. How dare he let data influence his opinion!

" We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions."
Oh boy...kinda looks like when you're skeptical of the science but then actually review the science, you see it's pretty solid. Solid enough to completely and publicly change one of the most prominent skeptic's mind.

Let's compare this to another vocal "skeptic", blogger Anthony Watts. When discussing the upcoming BEST results in 2011, Watts http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/06/briggs-on-berkeleys-best-plus-my-thoughts-from-my-visit-there/posted the following[/url]:

I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong....the method isn’t the madness that we’ve seen from NOAA, NCDC, GISS, and CRU....That lack of strings attached to funding, plus the broad mix of people involved especially those who have previous experience in handling large data sets gives me greater confidence in the result being closer to a bona fide ground truth than anything we’ve seen yet. Dr. Fred Singer also gives a tentative endorsement of the methods....Climate related website owners, I give you carte blanche to repost this.

Oh, so did Anthony Watts convert with Muller? Did he accept the results as he said he would? Nope, just lots of back tracking and "explanations" about this stance.

Grant Foster has a nice rundown of the whole situation at his blog.

zdas04, re: linear trend lines
Yup, my analysis was a rough linear approximation of trends. I'm not a full-time climate scientists but it still is appropriate enough to support my earlier statements and is in-line with research by actual full-time climate scientists. If you want in-depth analysis of the trends and ENSO, look back at the following papers posted before:

Balmaseda et al 2013
Abraham et al 2013
Levitus et al 2012
Foster and Rahmstorf 2011
Kosaka and Xie 2013 ( Tamino Article on the paper)
Cowtan and Way 2013 (RC article on the paper)
General Discussion on “the pause”

Regarding smoothing and trend analysis (using high-order polynomial fits), Tamino (aka Grant Foster, published statistician in the area of climate science) speaks to this at this blog. His post was so strong, he forced an apology out of the blogger who made similar claims to the one quoted in your post. Foster, promised to do a series on "smoothing" if he apologized and, keeping to his word, is currently doing a multi-part series on the topic.

It's funny that you accuse those in my camp of shifting the goal posts when I keep having to repeat the same thing as you jump between the issue du jour.
1) The "pause" disproves the theory (temperatures)
a) No it doesn't - OHC, low solar activity, ENSO.
2) Temperature trends can't prove anything, it's about fluxes
b) Ah, ok. OHC (still), radiative imbalance
3) The radiative imbalance is too imprecise to mean anything. The models use them and they are failing to predict the "pause" (re-introduce the "pause" in circular reasoning).
c) The "pause" is due to a short term, La Nina dominated period. Nothing can predict ENSO events as they are stochastic but they oscillate and are shown to have no long term impact on trends. Therefore, models aren't proven wrong because they don't track this short term biased time frame.
4) I don't believe that, period.
d) Ok, look at all the research on ENSO. If you can show me reviewed research that says otherwise, I'd be happy to entertain it.
5) (Nothing on ENSO) Temperature data sets are wrong! Models are wrong!
e) Both have already been discussed. It seems you're jumping from point to point, in a circular fashion, and not actually addressing my criticism of each point.
6) ...(randomly bring up models, temperature, "pal-review", the "pause")...(the circle continues)

Now that I feel like a broken record, continuing to have to repeat the same thing against the same argument, I think it's important to look back at the discussion to see how are the "skeptics".

"Skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches as opposed to him who asserts and thinks he has found" - Miguel de Unamuno

A great definition of the term. Which are you; the "asserter" or the investigator? Which one was Richard Muller? I know that everyone posting here thinks they are an investigator but, recursively, asserting it doesn't make it so. Look back at the posts - there is clear divide between the "asserters" and the "investigators".

But with baffling stubbornness, the "asserters" claim the investigators are the "asserters" by asserting that the investigator's research can be dismissed out of hand.

Once again, I'd like to run down what I'm not allowed to do:
(1) I can't use climate models because they are wrong (sic)
- Ok, I'll use temperature data
(2) I can't use temperature data because it is corrupt (sic)
- Ok, I'll use empirical measurements
(3) I can't use empirical measurements because the error is too large
- Ok, well peer-reviewed literature
(4) I can't use peer-reviewed literature because it is "pal-review" (sic)
- What else is there? Seriously, what am I suppose to do? At this point, through a priori rejections, I literally have no means of providing evidence if playing by your rules.

But certainly these rules need to work both ways. In which case, you have no means of supporting your position. You must, at best, be absolutely agnostic. Yet, agnosticism isn't about shutting your ears; its about keeping them open. So, it isn't agnosticism but carefully designed ignorance. You have systematically shut yourself off from any form of evidence.

But it's worse than carefully designed ignorance, it's about hypocritical inversions of the standards of evidence:
(a) You can use temperature data to describe the "pause" and then extend it to undermine the entire theory
- Despite the fact I've used temperature data (GISS trends), empirical measurements (OHC) and peer reviewed research (ENSO and in general) to disprove that stance
- Oh wait but only you can use temperature data. Right!
(b) You can use a single blog post to undermine the enterity of peer-reviewed data on the subject
- I've countered with peer-reviewed literature from experts in the field
- Oh wait, blog posts by a weatherman carry more weight! Right!
(c) You can use unsupported statements with NO supporting evidence to prove whatever point you want to
- I've used all 4 sources of evidence to show otherwise
- Oh wait, none of that matters. You're unsupported statements are a trump card against any form of evidence! Right!

Despite the many accusations to the contrary, I don't assume I'm right. If I'm challenged on something, I'll support it with the best evidence available. But when the other side can dismiss it "out-of-hand" or with a single blog post and claim victory, the debate devolves.

 

[rb1957]

i guess it's "peter pan advice" but it'd be more helpful i think if we didn't take posts as personal attacks (i can't use ..., but you can use ...).

IMHO there's lot's of evidence for both sides ...

it is getting warmer and models say it's due to manmade CO2,
but the models are a coarse (inaccurate) representation of the real world,
but we are adding a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere which could (will?) affect future climate.

there are lots of temperature data showing the warming,
but many of these are corrupt,
and why keep the raw data "secret", not available to the public,
and why "correct" it ?

but we've got only one earth, can we afford to be wrong ?
maybe man isn't the cause, but shouldn't we act as though he is ('cause we can't afford to be wrong) ?

but what if all our actions have negligible effect on the global climate
('cause we're not addressing the key drivers),
what a waste that'd be !

IMHO, neither side can prove their case, both sides believe they're right (and that the other side is a heretic).

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[TGS4]

rconnor - you completely missed my point about "average" temperature. Please see my new post: thread730-357845

And w.r.t to OHC, do you NOT pay attention to my discussion about the ARGO data? Of the graphs that you show, I have confidence in each of them from 2007 onward. Before that, whatever "data" is there is garbage from this engineer's perspective.

What's most interesting, in your (almost exasperated) two lists at the end of your latest post, is actually one of my points - we don't know near enough, we can't measure our planet with any sort of accuracy to say one way or another, and we cant simulate what we don't understand (and even if we could, the discretization error alone, at today's computing power, overwhelms any "signal").

I'm willing to bend on the whole "air temperature pause invalidates the models" meme if you can tell me what time scale would be necessary to validate them? What timescale is necessary to remove the supposedly-stochastic ENSO effects? The "pause" really didn't become an interesting topic until Benjamin Santer, in this paper said

Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature

. Depending on the metric that you use (and I have a huge problem with all of the global averaging metrics, BTW), we are close to this time frame.

 

[rterickson]

Timely article: Link

 

[zdas04]

What a snotty, supercilious piece of garbage that link was. The basic premise was that the "Denier's" don't publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, so they must be afraid of the heat of peer-review. There are three reasons for the one-sided population of papers in these journals: (1) the "peer group" that the journals draw from is made up of the high deacons of the AGW religion; (2) Mostly the "deniers" are asking the researchers to demonstrate ANY proof of their claims ("proof" is not encapsulated in a computer model output, ever) and any papers are asking questions instead of providing conclusions; and (3) it is nearly impossible to prove a negative so research that is counter to AGW doctrine is simply rejected as not being "compelling" or "definitive".

This is exactly like doing an analysis of Christian publications and concluding that there are no Muslim learned papers.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[ornerynorsk]

"out of 13,950 articles, 13,926 supported the reality of global warming"

But, in a democratic society, isn't this proof enough? (sarcasm intended)

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[rb1957]

only 13950 articles ... cherry picking !

of course, only a minor part of the debate is about "is warming happening", i think the more important question is "is man causing the warming"

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[rb1957]

and the third question (as i started this thread) ... "could we be creating climate impacts in the future ?"

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[GregLocock]

From that article "out of 13,950 articles, 13,926 supported the reality of global warming."

Straw man. Didn't bother reading the rest. The skeptics main issue is does anthropogenic CO2 affect global temperatures significantly, not whether the global temp has increased since the last ice age or the little ice age or whatever you want as a baseline.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[cranky108]

A man only hears what he wants to hear and disreguards the rest. Nothing new.

Why are people who clame to be for progress, always fighting to slow it down? Is all progress in a class of destrictive?

Why stop with electric cars? Why not go back to the horse? At least that would reduce the number the goverment has in holding pens.